Chris Christie’s critics savor his misfortune

Christie has long prided himself on being a one-man band, divorced from the toxic political swamp of Washington and beholden to few party elders. His decision to take on Kean Jr. was an example of that. So was his robust — some said excessive — criticism of House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) last year over federal relief after Hurricane Sandy.

During his reelection battle, he sought out Democrats far more than he did other Republicans. He painted himself as a truth-teller who would do the right thing no matter which party it offended.

Text Size

But Christie is also known for his insular circle of advisers. A dearth of dissenting voices in his immediate orbit has long been a criticism of the governor.

“He talks to very few people,” Kean told POLITICO.

The Republican who’s worked with Christie was more blunt: “Christie doesn’t think anyone in the room is as smart as Christie.”

As down and out as Christie appears to be at this moment, how Democrats and Republicans respond in the coming weeks carries its own risks. Any allegation against Christie that goes too far or doesn’t hold up will be used to discredit the broader case against him. Any number of other officials who lack Christie’s political skills have found reports of their demise to be exaggerated.

“Christie himself says he was not involved, which I do not believe he would say if he was, so that is that,” said Republican strategist Alex Castellanos. “And I do not believe Americans are going to be surprised that politics has broken out in the political world … or that politics in New Jersey, ain’t beanbag.”

When the bridge flap first made national headlines after Election Day and questions arose about the role of Christie’s appointees to the agency controlling the bridge, it took a full week for Christie’s team to respond. The governor then held a grim-faced, answer-every-question news conference about whether his office was involved in the lane closures. The answer, he said, was unequivocal: Of course not.

But that defense collapsed in dramatic fashion on Wednesday. Text messages and emails sent and received by his longtime friend, David Wildstein, one of two Port Authority officials to leave their jobs over the scandal, showed people reveling in the misery of the people affected by the traffic jams. The kids stuck in traffic on school buses because of the lane closures, he wrote in one message, were “children of Buono voters” — a reference to Christie’s Democratic opponent in the governor’s race, Democrat Barbara Buono.

That line “may turn out to be much more of a threat to Christie’s political future than Barbara Buono ever was,” Weekly Standard writer William Kristol, an occasional Christie critic, quipped in an email.

Christie’s one-paragraph statement that said he was “misled” about staff involvement likely won’t go far enough to quell the questions surrounding the mess. What will matter is how he handles it going forward, and what else emerges.

“The core question people have in a crisis is, what kind of person are you?’” said Bruce Haynes, a Republican operative at the political consulting firm Purple Strategies. “Christie’s strength is he can answer that by being who he has always been — tough but fair. He’s a prosecutor, that’s his DNA. If there’s wrongdoing, he should find it, punish it, move on to the next thing. That’s who he is and has been, and what people will expect of him now and going forward.”